Stupefication

[Chris Waigl]

On 29 Aug 2011, at 06:56, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> Yes, please.  E.g.:
> stupefy -> stupefaction (more commonly)
> reify -> reification


It is my general, slightly improvised [so not deeply checked] understanding that English gets those Latinate and pseudo-Latinate words from three sources: a) from Latin via French (these usually go back to real Latin words that already have a pp in -factus and a noun in -factio - satisfacere (satisfaction) - satifier - satisfy), b) from learned coinings, usually from the 19th century (reify) c) from productive English use of the -ify suffix (speechify, Pepsify, whatever).

The latter and usually the middle categories should get Englishified nouns in -(i)fication (using the ablaut fac>fic). This also leads to the mostly applicable rule that verbs in -efy get nouns in -faction and verbs in -ify get nouns in -ification.

Chris Waigl


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Chris Waigl -- http://chryss.eu -- http://eggcorns.lascribe.net
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